


Apocalypsis Argenteus

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, As Hopeful As the World of Ruin Can Be Anyway, Canon-Typical Violence, Cloning Blues, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Episode Ignis Spoilers, Episode Ignis Verse 2, Episode Prompto Spoilers, Far Worse, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Gun Violence, Heavy Angst, Hints that Noct is Gay or Ace, I mean not too graphic but its there, If This Makes You Sad Just Remember That In This Timeline Noct Lives, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mentioned Noctis Lucis Caelum, Poor Prompto Argentum, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompto Argentum-centric, Rated For Violence, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, The Ending Will Be Hopeful I Promise, Trans Ignis Scientia, Trans Male Character, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:38:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: Ignis’s breath stutters then stills for just a moment as the three of you take in the scene.Gladio swallows audibly and his shoulders tense.You stumble out of the room with your hand clenched over your mouth.





	1. As Friend and Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to hell, everybody!  
> So, I've always liked considering how the events of Episode Prompto would come to pass in Episode Ignis's Verse 2 timeline, considering that everything between Altissia and Zegnautus from the original timeline was skipped.  
> This is me writing down what I considered. Not gonna lie, it's not a happy story (but you weren't really expecting one from me, were you?)  
> This is currently unfinished but there is a solid 4k+ of additional words written and more plot planned beyond that. This is straight up the first fic that I have ever planned out point by point from start to finish, and I think it's been made better for that, honestly. I'll have to do it more.  
> Sorry about this being in second person. I tried writing this in third person and got tired of it so I switched over, and it was easier to write this way. I know it's cumbersome. As always, "you" is not _you_ , "you" is Prompto.  
> No beta, so all mistakes are purely on my shoulders. If you find any mistakes, let me know  
> 1/13/19: on hiatus. not abandoned/canceled, promise

Ignis stirs from the cot across the room, and you practically fly to his side. His eyes, framed by faint pink scars, blink open and stare blankly.

“Ignis?” You reach out and clasp his hand, which is weakly grasping at the blanket Ignis is engulfed in. “Are you okay?”

After a beat, Ignis’s eyes focus on you and his brow furrows. “Where’s… Noct?”

Oh. It figures that Ignis would ask for him right away. Never one to put himself first even when he almost died—

Shit. Don’t think about that. Ignore the burn scars. He’s okay. Ignis is okay and Noct is…

“Noct’s in the Crystal,” you squeeze Ignis’s hand when you feel him tense up. “He saved you, remember? Then he went in.”

Ignis’s head drops back to rest on his pillow. “Where are we?”

“Niflheim,” you wave around at your surroundings with your free hand. “We’re in one of uh… Ravus’s airships. We’re on our way back to Lucis, though.”

“I see,” Ignis rests his forearm over his eyes. “Where is Gladio?”

“With Ravus, I think,” you jump a little as the airship rattles. You have never felt anywhere near at ease around imperial war machines despite your affinity for the Empire’s weaponry.

You realize you are still holding one of Ignis’s hands. You let go. He doesn’t mention it. “Where will Ravus be leaving us?”

The ship shudders again and you cling to the metal railing of the military cot Ignis is stationed in. “I don’t know. I think Gladio’s finding out.”

A pause. “Are you alright, Prompto?”

Part of you almost wants to laugh in Ignis’s face. “You’re asking about everyone but you, my guy. I’m fine! A little scraped up after Altissia but nothing bad! It’s been like a week so it’s all good. You… well. Uh, you didn’t answer me, Iggy.”

You had nearly gotten your arm chopped off by an axeman while you were helping evacuate Altissia’s citizens. Not even a scar is left behind thanks to Gladio closing four potions into your functional hand in a panic when he found you an hour after the last refugee in your care had been taken out of the city. You’re doing alright, all things considered.

“I’m doing as well as I can be,” Ignis breathes out, a weary noise that tugs at something in your chest. “I have a headache and the light is hurting my eyes but I seem to be otherwise unharmed.”

Scars, faint but still present like those on Ignis’s face or the years-old ones curving along the bottom of his pecs, twine up Ignis’s left arm and across his chest like lightning bolts or cracked earth. Like a shattered mirror. You take a step away. “Do you want me to turn the lights off?”

“It’s alright,” Ignis sighs again. “I daresay light sensitivity may be something I must simply get used to.”

His resignation stings. You swallow thickly. “Things are kinda a mess, huh?”

You hear footsteps, heavy on the metal floors of the airship, stop outside the door. Though you know he’s there, Gladio’s voice still startles you a little. “You’re awake.”

You shuffle over so Gladio has a clear path to get to Ignis, and you think you can see his hands shaking from where they hover of Ignis’s semi-propped up form. “The hell were you doing?”

“You know full well,” Ignis struggles to sit up fully, but manages it. Gladio sits in the chair beside the bed so that the two of them are eye-level. You don’t really know what to do with yourself, so you just try to become one with the metal-paneled walls and pretend that everyone in the room doesn’t realize you’re listening with outrageous curiosity.

“You could have died,” Gladio’s voice is flat, hollow with the kind of grief-stricken emptiness that you only ever heard from Gladio when someone mentioned his late father. He never talked about him.

“Yet I’m not dead,” Ignis speaks with the air of a teacher having to explain an elementary concept to a six-year-old. Gladio’s entire being seems to bristle, and Ignis reaches one trembling hand up to rest it on Gladio’s shoulder. Ignis's voice softens a touch. “A small sacrifice in the greater battle, Gladio.”

Those words must mean something to the two of them, because Gladio makes a pained noise and drops his head into his hands. Whether it is a nobility thing or an Ignis-and-Gladio thing is anyone’s guess. The sentiment is terrifying anyway. Just how willing is Ignis to throw away his life? Is his death a trivial matter to him as long as the people he cares about are safe?

You understand entirely, but you try to tell yourself that you don’t.

You busy yourself with your phone as Gladio and Ignis begin whispering to each other. As curious as you are, whatever is happening over there isn’t for you. You know that.

“Prompto,” Gladio draws you away from your review of the shaky shots Noct took with your phone after he stole it one night at Palmaugh. “We have a job to do before we can get back to Lucis.”

“What is it?” You feel a twist of homesickness rise in you. You hate being in Niflheim. Something about it makes your skin crawl, and it isn’t just the near-emptiness of every fort and settlement you’ve seen so far. Anywhere would be better. You’d go live on the top of Mount Ravatogh if it meant you never had to set foot in Gralea again.  
  
“Ravus is planning on evacuating Niflheimian citizens,” Gladio shrugs. “The days are getting short and the Emperor has pretty much vanished into thin air. Except for the military, the country is crumbling and Ravus doesn’t wanna abandon the citizens to the daemons. We’re gonna help.”  
  
“Why are we helping the Niffs?” You blurt out. You don’t hold the same intense vitriol for Niflheimians that Gladio and Noct seem to, but that’s probably from living in the refugee district of Insomnia all your life. Despite that, you still feel a little uneasy thanks to the whole Insomnia-was-razed-by-Imperials thing.

“Ravus brought us to Noct,” Ignis clears his throat, less a call for attention and simply more of a reflexive action. Your attention is drawn anyway. “We owe him a favor, and he has asked for this one thing. We are already on our way to Lucis, so stopping to pick up refugees would not be a waste of our time or resources. We’ll have to talk over logistics with Lestallum —as it is Lucis’s only major city at the moment— but I think we have at least enough authority to convince Lestallum’s City Council to grant these people asylum until we find something better.

“Right,” you twist your bracelets idly. “Where are we going, then?”

“Ravus said there would be trapped citizens and extra troop supports to move them at the First Magitek Production Facility,” Gladio make a face. “He says that there are MTs there, but that there shouldn’t be anyone of actual rank still around. Dunno what the hell that means, but it seems like we’re just going to have to take his word for it.”

“Guess we’ll be in for a fight no matter what, huh?” You laugh, but it’s the kind of nervous thing you always dragged out when you weren’t really feeling the humor. “When will we get there?”

“In a few hours apparently,” Gladio leans forward in his seat. “We’ve got time. You think you’ll be good to go, Iggy?”

Ignis nods. “I’m as well as I can be. Given a change of clothes I think I will be right as rain.”

Gladio helps Ignis up from the cot and you rifle through Noct’s arsenal to find where Ignis stored some of his spare clothes. You present a neatly folded outfit to Ignis, who nods in silent gratitude before being led out the room and to the airship’s ablution block. You wonder why the Niffs don’t just call it a washroom or something.

You’re left with pretty much nothing to do except clean your guns and make sure you have enough potions in the arsenal.

You realize suddenly that, until Noct comes back, you probably won’t be able to get any curatives again.

You don’t know when Noct is going to come back. You’re pretty sure he will.

Gods, you hope he will.

Your chest feels tight. You close your eyes and see the sparks and crystal shards of the arsenal dance against your eyelids. “Shit…”

Ignis and Gladio return after some time —you lost track somewhere between sorting food items and being mentally dissolved by an acute bout of intense loneliness— and Ignis looks much better. He is still walking somewhat gingerly and he has that tightness around his eyes that you usually associate with caffeine headaches, but he is wearing clean clothes and is no longer sporting the innumerable specks of dirt and blood that had been scattered across his skin. His shirt is one of those collared deals, the neck rising high enough to cover those lightning-like burn marks trailing across his skin. Ignis’s hair is unstyled, left hanging over his eyes just a little. You wonder if he would take your hair gel if you offered it to him. Instead of that, you pull a few granola bars out of the arsenal and give them to the other two.

“Thank you,” Ignis holds the bar in his hands for a moment, just staring at it. When Gladio opens his, Ignis starts and begins doing the same, the foil wrapper crinkling between his fingers.

“Not hungry?” Gladio takes a bite from his impromptu meal and levels his gaze at you.

“Nope,” you shrug. Your stomach feels a little too close to empty but it’s a familiar enough sensation. Any familiarity at all in a time like this is a blessing.

“Eat,” Gladio chucks a granola bar at you and you narrowly avoid being hit in the face by it. “Can’t go fighting shit on an empty stomach.”

“If you say so,” you unwrap the granola bar and nibble at it pointedly until Gladio looks satisfied. When he isn’t looking, you fold the wrapper over and shove the second half of the bar into your pocket.

You look up to see Ignis’s gaze on you with some emotion behind his eyes that you don’t want to think about. Your face burns as you turn away.

“How are we getting into the, uh, place?” You break the silence that had descended over the room. “I mean, they won’t just let us in, right? Even if we come in an airship?”

Gladio digs around in his pants pocket for a minute and draws out what looks like a metallic credit card. “Ravus gave me a keycard. He said it’ll get us through any locked door in the facility.”

“What do we do if it doesn’t work?” You pull your hand away from your wrist. You hadn’t noticed you were messing with your bracelets.

“We’ll get in somehow,” Gladio shrugs. “I’m no fan of Ravus’s, but we owe him. We’ve gotta put the effort in.”

“Indeed,” Ignis adds, and that’s the end of that.

You don’t actually see Ravus when you depart from the dropship. You are sent off by some Niff woman whose name you never caught. She wasn’t in military insignia, you don’t think. You assume she was some sort of mercenary.

You and your two remaining friends ( _Noct still counts as my friend_ , you think idly, _even if he’s in the Crystal, right_?) stand outside the fence of a boxy compound. Through the mash of sheds and parked dropships you can see MTs standing guard.

“This would be a lot easier if we had Noct here,” your voice is brittle in the cold air. You wish you had dressed warmer. Even Gladio has a shirt on under a long-sleeved jacket. You’re still in your stupid vest. “He could warpstrike ‘em all sneaky-like, and we’d be good to go.”

“Well, he’s not here,” Gladio makes a noise that you hope isn’t a scoff but probably was. “Iggy, instructions?”

Ignis takes a moment to consider, one hand braced against the fence as he leans to and fro to get a better look of the scene. His fingers curl into the chainlink. “Gladio, you should go along the left side, behind that building there. The one with the red —yes, that one. There are several MTs in front of it that we may be able to avoid engaging entirely if we’re careful. If not, Prompto has grenades that can take out the group in one hit.”  
  
You hadn’t realized that Ignis was noticing the weapons you stole whenever you busted Niff bases. It makes sense that he would, though.

“Why aren’t we using spells instead?” you ask, though your hand is already descending into the ether to find what Gladio will need. “They’re stronger.”

“We need to conserve our spells,” Ignis grimaces, an expression that you rarely ever see on him. Sure, a few looks of distaste have graced his features from time to time, but a full-on grimace is a rarity. “We have no way of knowing when Noctis will return. It is best we keep our spells for dire moments.”

Shit. Right.

You summon a few of the lumen flares you have had squirreled away for ages and hand them to Gladio. “You know how to use these, right?”

Gladio turns the box over in his hands. “You pry up this back panel, right?”

“Yeah,” you point to it, then pantomime the next actions. “You peel that up with your fingernails then press the button underneath. It’ll blow up at ten seconds, or if it hits something hard enough. So… just be sure to throw it once you press the button.”

“Got it,” Gladio nods and tucks one of the boxy grenades into his pocket and dismisses the others.

“I’ll move around the right side,” Ignis, all business, is back to strategizing. You turn your attention to the path he’s talking about. “Prompto, I will need you to climb this scaffolding in the middle and provide cover fire if needed. If we manage to avoid combat I trust you can move along the tops of the buildings to the entrance.”

The end of Ignis’s last statement lilts up like it’s a question, but it’s not one. The thought of climbing _anything_ has your heart beating a little harder than it should, but you swallow the fear down. You can’t mess up. “You got it, Iggy.”

“So it’s settled,” Ignis says. “On my mark.”

It all goes to hell in a burger basket pretty quickly. You hope Ifrit likes charbroiled idiot, because that’s what you’re serving up.

Gladio and Ignis do well for themselves. They make it to the door with no problems. You? You make a goddamn mess.

You do generally alright as the others make their way through the outside of the compound. Your job, once you scrambled up the side of the scaffolding and stopped shaking like a leaf, was essentially just a more vigilant version of sitting, holding a gun, and looking pretty. It was when it was your turn to move that you managed to ruin it.

For some ungodly reason, an active MT was stationed at the edge of the second building you crossed. You crept past it, expecting its eerie stillness to be indicative of being shut down or something. You never really figured out how MTs worked.

The MT was definitely _not_ shut down. As you moved, it’s clawed hand jerked out and took hold of your arm, stopping you dead in your tracks. You stumbled, and the metal grip on your arm grew tighter, drawing blood. The bone in your arm that had cracked clean in two just a week or so ago was suddenly throbbing. You cussed _loudly_ and managed to draw the attention of every other walking tin can in the vicinity.

In a panic, you shot the MT that was restraining you in the chest as many times as it took for it to let you go, then threw a few grenades into the veritable hoard of MTs on the ground that had begun to take aim at you.

While it was already a terrible plan, it was made even worse by the _ridiculously explosive barrels_ placed innocently on the ground right underneath you. As soon as the first grenade went off, you were knocked from your feet and consumed in searing heat. You blacked out for a moment, and the only thought your brain could conjure up was the memory of Noct’s apologies after he accidentally threw a fire flask too short and caught you in the blast.

“Prompto!” After far too long of gasping in fiery air and trying to put yourself out by rolling across the metal rooftop, you feel hands on your skin and the familiar healing chill of a strong curative run through your body. “Are you alright? Come on, speak up!”

Another curative is poured over you and you begin to feel reliably human again. The lack of pain is so relieving that you have to take a moment to just appreciate how nice it is to not be on fire. After a count of ten, you open your eyes and smile up at Ignis and Gladio, who had both somehow made their way up on the roof of the shed with you. The sight of a third curative clutched in Gladio’s hand, ready to be given to you, makes the joy drain right out of the situation. Noct isn’t around to replace those, just like he isn’t around to replace spells. Your chest tightens. You just wasted two. “Thanks, guys.”

Ignis nods and offers you his hand. “Let’s… let’s be more careful next time, shall we?”

You take the help and rise to your feet. Gladio pats you on the shoulder and beckons you toward the edge of the rooftop, where there’s easy access to the ground. You start forward. No footsteps follow from behind you.

Gladio is safely making his way back down to the ground, so you turn to see why Ignis is still standing there. He doesn’t seem to notice you, muscles held stiff as if bracing for impact. Ignis’s eyes flicker to the fire still burning on the ground below and the MTs melting and hissing against the concrete. Ignis breathes in carefully measured intervals, in-two-three-four hold-two-three-four out-two-three-four, like what he taught you to do when he caught you having a panic attack in Noct’s bathroom one day after school.

You remember licks of purple flame and ashy skin turning cold in the throes of death—

Fuck.

“Hey, Iggy,” you reach out and touch his arm lightly, not a grab but instead what is hopefully a grounding gesture. “It’s alright. Come on, let’s just go get inside, okay?”

Ignis’s gaze snaps to you and he adjusts his glasses as if by instinct. “Right. Right, I… I’m sorry.”

“No worries,” you tap his arm again and point toward the edge of the roof. “We all have those things, right? No harm, no foul.”

Ignis swallows hard and casts one more glance at the remnants of the explosion which are slowly beginning to burn out. “Of course.”

Ignis’s gloved hands shake as he helps you down from the shed. For the sake of his pride, you don’t mention it.

You thank all the Astrals when you make it inside without further incident. Even Ifrit, loathe as you are to thank that fucker for anything. While the metal hallways and harsh lighting aren’t exactly welcoming, it’s at least pretty warm —but not on fire— and that’s a vast improvement from outside. The entryway is empty of MTs, too. Small blessings.

“You might want to change,” Gladio says once the three of you are indoors. “You’re looking a little rough there.”

He’s right. Your shirt and vest are both singed to pieces and you’re lucky your pants are still capable of staying on your body. Your boots seem okay, as do your bracelets (you send another prayer of gratitude to any Astral who feels like hearing about it). You reach into the arsenal to acquire another set of clothes and discover… nothing.

Shit, right. Your Crownsguard fatigues got ruined during the battle in Altissia, and you hadn’t had them repaired yet

“Hey, Ignis?” You call out, beckoning him over with a hand. “You think there’s any clothes in this place?”

“I would assume there might be,” Ignis muses, following you as you begin to duck your head into side rooms along the entry way. Gladio keeps watch by the main entrance, sending you off with a lazy wave and a flash of light as he summons his greatsword. “These compounds were occasionally the sort that employees would live in, or at least stay at indefinitely.”

“How much do you know about this place?” You’re fiddling with your wrist again, picking at the stitching of the leather band seated above your right hand. The fourth door down the right side finally shows something promising. There are lockers, made of unpainted metal with the type of combo locks you used in high school, lined up on the far wall.

“Not much,” Ignis follows you into the room and inspects the closest locker. He’s adjusting his glasses and shirt sleeves far too much to be necessary. Hell, he’s even doing that nervous tic where he pulls at the front of his shirt, a relic from the days he had to conceal his chest. You haven’t seen him do that since the month after he got top surgery back in 753. “Lucis never had much luck getting into the magitek production facilities. The only proven information I was ever privy to was reports reports on contractor and troop movements. From what I remember, many employees essentially lived in these facilities.”

“Yeesh,” you jiggle the lock on one of the storage compartments a few doors down from Ignis. “Hate to live in a place like this.”

“Agreed,” Ignis pushes his glasses up once more, this time with his left hand. His thumb and middle finger push against the frames for just a second too long.

“Okay Iggy,” you turn to face Ignis fully and lean your shoulder against the cold locker door you were just trying to finagle open. “We gotta talk.”

Ignis is no fool. He clearly knows exactly what you are going to ask. His jaw visibly tenses for a moment. “About what, Prompto?”

“You nearly died,” the words are bitter in your mouth and become even bitterer still in the air. “Noct is gone and you just woke up like twelve hours ago or something and you should be super not okay right now and it’s like… alright to be not alright right now, y’know? You don’t needa pretend like you’re a-ok.”

A solid effort is made on Ignis’s part to not react. When you were younger you struggled to see beyond the cool, collected front Ignis always put up. Nowadays you can see the strain his deliberately stilled face hides. It’s present in spades. And then, Ignis cracks. He exhales in a gasp so sharp it’s nearly a sob. He presses his hands to his face, probably cramming his glasses into the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ignis admits, his voice muffled from the way he’s covering his mouth. “We rescue whoever is left in this godsforsaken place, and then what? We wait for Noct? For how long? And what _then_ ?”  
  
Empathy hits you like a bus, rising from somewhere in your stomach and squeezing the air from your lungs on its way to your eyes. You dig your knuckles into them for a few seconds, trying to stop the impulse to cry. It’s been a long week.

You step closer to Ignis and reach out, hands halting mere inches from him. “I know you’re not really a touchy-feely kinda guy but… do you want a hug?”

Ignis’s uncovers his face, leaving his quivering hands poised in the air over his sternum. His eyes, suspiciously glassy behind his specs, search you for a moment. “Alright.”

You rush forward and gather Ignis up in your arms. For someone who is far taller than you and far more built under the proper clothing he typically wears, Ignis feels exceptionally frail in this moment. Embracing him is nothing like those rare nights when Noct would cling to you in the dark, or the lighthearted joke of you wrapping your arms around Gladio’s middle and pretending to try to pick him up off the ground the same way he could you. Holding this Ignis, this burned man who has just barely clung to life after trying to throw it all away for Noct’s sake, was like what you imagined saving a drowning man would be like. You never really learned how to swim, but you could picture pulling someone from a lake they had been certain they’d die in.

Ignis shudders in your grasp, and you stand against the lockers, rubbing a hand up and down Ignis’s back.

“You smell like you’ve been set on fire,” Ignis remarks after a while, his voice much steadier than it had been before.

“Wonder why that is,” you respond on impulse, unhooking your arms from where they had been locked around Ignis. “Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright,” Ignis smiles, a weak little mockery of the grins he wore before Altissia. Nothing has been fixed, not really. Ignis looks less like he’s about to actively have a panic attack, so you remind yourself that it’s a good start. “Maybe we should find some better clothes for you, though?”

“Definitely,” you turn your attention back to the wall of lockers and begin spinning the dials of the lock you were inspecting before. “You got any paper, Iggy?”

Ignis looks up from the locker he is trying to jiggle open with a dagger. “Of course. What do you need it for?”

“Cracking these locks,” you accept the notebook and pen Ignis summons for you. You open the cover and find that it’s Ignis’s recipe notebook. You tuck both the book and pen between your bicep and your ribs. “Gimme like two minutes and I can get this open.”  
  
Ignis watches you work, dagger held loosely in his hand. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“The Internet,” you pause every few moments to write the first string of numbers. “When I was in middle school people would take my clothes out of my gym locker and lock them in other ones. The teachers never really did anything about it other than opening up the lockers for me so I just learned how to do it myself. You know how middle school is.”

“I don’t, actually,” Ignis flips his dagger absentmindedly. Even with his slightly unsteady limbs, he manages elegant knifework without even thinking about it. In an offhand sort of way, you resolve to get better at spinning your pistols. “I went to a private academy when I was very young, but by the time I was nine or so I was moved entirely to tutoring and independent study until I went to university.”

“Wow,” you pick out the outlier in the string of numbers and circle it. Hell yeah, one third of the combination down. “I couldn’t imagine doing that. It must have been hard.”  
  
“It was my duty,” Ignis switches the hand he’s twirling his dagger with. “For the Crown and for Noctis. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”

“Didn’t you basically raise him, though?” You remember Ignis hanging around Noct’s apartment a lot, especially when Noct was too deep in his depression and executive dysfunction to take care of his surroundings or himself. “That’s a lot to ask of a kid.”

“He had caretakers until he moved into his apartment,” Ignis banishes his dagger and resummons it, his hands refusing to stay idle for a second. “I did a lot for him, but taking care of him as a friend, as opposed to making sure he met his expectations as a prince? It wasn’t in my job description. It was asked of me, once, when I was just meeting Noct, but I never needed it to be.”  
  
“You care about him a lot, don’t you?”

“As do we all.”

“Right.”

You circle the outlier of the second string of numbers. “I wish things didn’t go to hell so badly.”

“In Altissia?”

“Before that, too,” you glance up at Ignis. “Insomnia, I guess. The Niffs ruined everything. We coulda just… taken our little bachelor party road trip and I woulda gotten some sweet shots for Luna and we coulda gotten Noct to Altissia and they’d get married and be happy. But the empire just had to mess it all up.”

“The wedding was Niflheim’s idea in the first place,” Ignis says. “Even if they had not destroyed Insomnia when they had, it would have been the beginning of the end for our final stand against them. The wedding was going to be Niflheim’s first step into Insomnia; they were simply using Tenebrae to do it.”

You were never really good at the particulars of war and royalty. You’re not too sure if Noct ever was, either. “If the wedding was going to be all that, then why’d the king agree to it?”

“He had little choice. The treaty provided time for Insomnia to remain out of direct imperial control. He took what he could get. It was either accept the treaty and be overtaken slowly from within, or let Insomnia be overrun by a show of force,” Ignis chuckles, a low mirthless thing. “The Empire got their cake and ate it too.”

“Yeah,” you tuck Ignis’s notebook back under your arm, repeating the three numbers of the combo lock over and over again in your head. _11-29-16_. “You think Noct would have been happy with Luna?”

Ignis considers. “Royal marriages are rarely carried out for love. His Highness and Lady Lunafreya were certainly good friends, but I don’t know if Noctis would have been happy with all the expected trappings and traditions of a marriage with her.”

“He never talked to you about it?” You worry at your bottom lip, mind still running _11-29-16_.

“Did he ever discuss it with _you_?” Ignis replies, the question as rhetorical as they come. That’s the end of that.

“I think I’ve got this locker figured out,” you clear your throat. “Ready to see what’s in it?”

Ignis nods. “Clothes that will fit you, I hope.”

You spin the combination lock and feel the tumblers click into place with each correct number. “Gotcha.”

The locker has pictures pinned to the inside of the door with magnets. In them, a blonde woman poses with what must be her family. You wonder if she’s trapped here deeper in the facility. If she is, you hope you can get her out. She may be a Niff, but she looks nice.

The actual storage portion of the locker _does_ contain clothes, but the clothes are all too big. This woman was taller than you by a lot, it looks like. There’s a black beanie that you hold out to Ignis. “You think I should take this?”

“If we’re likely to spend more time outdoors, perhaps,” Ignis leans over to peer into the locker with you. “Anything else of note?”

“I don’t think so,” you say. You send the beanie off into the arsenal and decide to try another locker. “Want me to show you how to figure out the combinations real quick? It’ll be faster than just me opening all these.”  
  
Between both you and Ignis working on the storage compartments, you manage to find an outfit for you that both fits the climate and fits _you_ . Ignis actually laughs quietly when you ask about whether there’s an Astral dedicated to fashion (“I wanna pray to ‘em for blessing me with these great new pants!”) and that’s a victory. You also find a pair of vaguely respectable-looking sunglasses that you offer to Ignis, who takes them after some consideration. The longer you spend indoors, the less tight he is around the eyes, so you assume that light-sensitivity headache isn’t as bad indoors. You decide against trying to convince him to do something as “tacky” as wearing sunglasses inside if Ignis doesn’t _have_ to.

While you are rummaging through the former employee’s belongings, Gladio pokes his head into the room twice, grumbling —but not with any real vitriol— about how long you are taking. The second time around he asks why you just aren’t bashing the locks off, and Ignis retorts that he’d rather not draw every MT in the building to their location with the noise.

You’re given a moment of privacy to change into your stolen outfit after you make it through all the lockers, and you mourn your nice grey sweatpants as you store them in the void. You’re pretty certain you can’t get those fixed, but it can’t hurt to save them and find out.  
You suddenly remember the half-eaten granola bar you stuck in your pocket earlier. You don’t bother to see if it survived.

“Alright, where are we going?” You rock on your heels, feeling a little too restless suddenly now that you know it’s time to start actually doing your job. “Did Ravus say where there’s gonna be people?”

Gladio pulls out a map of the facility. You’re not sure whether he got it from Ravus or from rooting around in the adjacent rooms to the one you just technically looted. “Said there’d most likely be people left in the Specimen Storage Wing.”

“That sounds… ominous,” you grimace at the map, looking over the other sections of the facility. This whole damn place seems ominous judging from the names of the different wings. “We going there, then?”

“Yeah,” Gladio folds the map back up and tucks it in his back pocket. “I’ll lead. Had enough time to memorize the route with you having a fashion show in there.”  
“Hey,” you spread your hands, indicating your whole body. “Looks pretty good for secondhand, right?”

“Sure,” Gladio rolls his eyes and starts off toward the leftmost hallway off the entryway. “Might wanna keep your weapons ready to go. Just because nothin’ has come crawling up to fight us yet doesn’t mean it won’t.”  
  
You manage to be much more stealthy this time around, and you use your guns sparingly enough that you are given the rare Official Gladiolus Look of Pride™ as you disable an MT with nothing but your bare hands. You steal a weird folding baton off the MT’s slowly dissolving metallic corpse and decide to keep it. It reads AUDAX in blocky lettering down the grip. You notice, with an odd tightness in your chest, that the specific font used on the baton is as familiar to you as the back of your hand. You try not to dwell on it.

The facility is oddly empty. Other than easily-defeated MTs, there’s not really much of a sign of anyone left in the whole place. Every once in awhile you find clothes scattered about, or papers fallen from their places. Ignis takes everything that looks even vaguely useful and stores it in the arsenal. You begin to wonder if maybe he’s a little bit of a hoarder. With the Empire falling apart and this facility pretty much abandoned, is there really any way those papers could be helpful to the cause?

You’re not 100% sure what the cause is now that Noct is gone, but you’ll do your best to carry it out anyway.

“We should be coming up on the storage wing now,” Gladio notes, dismissing his sword but keeping his shield clutched in his left hand. “This next door.”  
  
“Awful quiet,” you murmur. Your heart seems resolved to beat louder to drown out the silence. “You think there’s really people in there?”  
  
“We can hope,” Ignis says, his voice equally as soft as your own.

Gladio scans the keycard Ravus gave him on the panel beside the door, and the room is opened.

Ignis’s breath stutters then stills for just a moment as the three of you take in the scene inside.

Gladio swallows audibly and his shoulders tense.

You stumble away from the doorway with your hand clenched over your mouth.


	2. Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Particularly bad times start here, my guys. Heed the fic tags. If there's anything in particular that I left off that you think I should tag, let me know and I'll amend it. Things get... rough.  
> (Sorry for the unfortunate length of this chapter... this is pretty much exactly the 4k words I mentioned in the notes for the first chapter with some editing. I've been busy lately. On the upside, you'll most likely be seeing more fics from me soon!)

“What the _hell_ ,” Gladio strides forward, then uncharacteristically dithers, seeming to fight with himself not to step right on back. You’re too busy trying not to throw up to see what Ignis is up to.

Inside the room was not _people_ . There were rows of tanks, lit by a cold blue glow that seemed to emanate from the liquid within. Most of the tanks were empty, but a few weren’t. Floating inside… was you. Very naked and very bald, but very recognizably you. Even worse, the unconscious body laying in front of a broken tank was _you_. The smell is indescribable. You think he might be dead.

You duck away from the room entirely to vomit around a corner of the hallway, anxiety making your stomach clench and writhe. You’re no stranger to becoming physically ill from anxiety (hell, you’ve _purposefully_ made yourself do this enough in the past to be fairly desensitized to the act of throwing up) but this feels like the worst occasion of it you’ve ever had. When you’re done spitting up bile, you take a moment to just shiver.

You knew you were from Niflheim. You knew normal Niflheimians didn’t have _barcodes_ tattooed on them as babies. You knew you weren’t normal. This? This shouldn’t have been a surprise.

But there were… _tanks_. There were metal implements and electrodes and plaques below glass labeled Magitek Unit 0595---- and someone that looks just like you dead or dying on the floor while more people just like you are suspended in the same viscous blueish fluid that was slicking a great amount of the floor.

In the rare moments when you could joke with yourself about the lines and numbers marring the skin on your wrist, you liked to imagine that maybe you were some sort of spy gone rogue or secret supersoldier taken from the Niffs as a baby. Your foster parents, in those few years they had been present in your life, had blanched and told you to keep those thoughts to yourself. You’re not sure their perception of you ever recovered after that (had you been too close to the truth?) By your twelfth birthday, your parents had disappeared with nary a word except for the too-small sums of money that appeared in your dubiously legal bank account monthly. You wonder what they knew.

You don’t even know what you know.

You stumble back to the room and hang on the doorframe, too afraid to come in but too afraid to leave your friends behind. Gladio is stalking between the tanks with a look you can only vaguely describe as rage gracing his features, and Ignis is checking the pulse of the body on the floor. He must find nothing, but he moves to try the pulsepoint on the wrist too, as if the person with your face will suddenly come alive if Ignis checks all his bases.

Ignis turns the body’s wrist over, and your heart skips jumping into your throat and scrambles to escape directly through your ribcage. There’s a barcode there, and while you can’t read the numbers from across the room, the vague shape of the bars and diamonds is enough.

A strangled sound is dragged out your mouth by an emotion you can’t quite place. Both Ignis and Gladio freeze and look to you. Ignis hesitates, that calm veneer of his cracking a little once again. He lets the body’s hand fall back to the floor and he stands. The knees of his slacks are damp with whatever fluid was in that tank before it was broken.

“I don’t know if the _others_ are retrievable from the tanks,” Ignis closes his eyes, takes a slow breath through his mouth, and seems to have to fight himself a little to open his eyes back up. “This one didn’t survive being outside of it.”  
“The fuck is all _this_ ?” Gladio had rounded around the other row of tanks to come up behind Ignis, where he now stands with his nigh-forgotten shield still clasped in one hand. “Human lab rats? Clones? Those labels on the tanks say they’re _MTs_ . They’ve got fucking barcodes on ‘em, not to mention they all look like—”  
  
“Gladiolus,” Ignis interjects, his gaze flicking very noticeably to where your leather cuff sits tight and damning around your wrist.

This is it. This is where you finally die. This has gotta be it.

You creep forward into the room on weak legs, fumbling with the clasps of the cuff as you go. It’s almost like ripping off a bandaid, finally pulling away that bracelet that all your friends have been at least mildly concerned about for years. It stings, it stings, it stings like duct tape pulling at your skin as you raise your right arm in a motion something like the start of a Lucian bow. “I’ve always had it. I don’t —I mean, I didn’t— know what it is,” your voice shakes the longer you speak. “I don’t know what I am. I guess… I guess I’m one of them? I knew I was from Niflheim and I should have told you that at least and I’m sorry but my parents they always told me never to let anyone see _this_ and now I guess this must be why I guess I’m some fucked up clone thing that makes sense who tattoos a barcode on a ba—”

“For fucks sake, Prompto,” you didn’t even notice Gladio coming up to you but he’s drawn you out of your reverie by closing a hand around your marked wrist. “You’re fine. It’s fine. Calm down for three seconds.”  
The sheer novelty of someone actually _touching your barcode_ makes it hard for you to do much else than agree and stare. You snap your mouth closed.

“This is fucked up,” Gladio begins, and boy isn’t it just? “You aren’t. Let’s just… shit, let’s just get out of here for a minute, alright?”  
You’re pulled from the room by the arm with Ignis trailing behind you. The door closes and it’s almost as if the monstrosities in the next room have stopped existing.

“Alright,” Gladio sits with his back against the wall, pulling you down with him. Ignis sits delicately at Gladio’s left hand, legs slightly bent in front of him. “So, you are from here, probably. Somewhere like here, at least. Maybe a fucking clone or some shit. You had no idea?”

“No,” you want to put your bracelet back on, but Gladio still has his hand around your wrist. It’s a loose grip, and you could definitely pull away if you indicated that you wanted to. You stay where you are. “All I knew was that I wasn’t Lucian, but anyone could tell that, really. I didn’t know any of… fuck.”

Your voice cracks a little and Gladio bows his head. His voice is just as solid as its ever been, maybe a little more tense. “You’re just as Lucian as the rest of us. I don’t have the slightest fucking idea what’s going on here, but we can find out.”

A feeling behind your eyes begins to burn and you blink away tears. “I should’ve shown you guys the tattoo. I just.. I wanted things to stay the way they were. I don’t want you to think I’m gonna hurt you because I’m… whatever those things are.”  
“You, hurt _us_?” Gladio laughs, more of an exhale than real laughter but it’s close enough to count. “I don’t think you have to worry about that one.”

“I don’t see you turning against us,” Ignis adds, and you realize he’s fiddling with the sunglasses you found for him earlier. “Not now, not ever.”

Silence descends down over you for a while. Gladio absentmindedly rubs at the back of your wrist with his thumb. Ignis folds and unfolds the sunglasses. You continue to fight back tears.

“So, there’s no one left to evacuate, huh?” Gladio leans his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

“Nothing left to evacuate, no,” you mutter. If either of them catch the turn of phrase, they don’t mention it.

You can only sit still for so long before your brain starts screaming at you, and when it’s already in a state of total meltdown (which you’re feeling a little too detached from to probably be normal) that time limit is shortened drastically. You stand up, shaking off Gladio’s hand, and hold out your own once your bracelet is secure one more. “Can I uh… have the keycard? I wanna go look for supplies. You guys can chill here.”  
  
Ignis and Gladio exchange a look. They exchange a _few_ looks. They do that weird thing where they talk with their eyes… at least you think that’s what they’re doing. If they’re not then they just decided to take this moment to make a lot of emotionally loaded glances at one another. Either way, you really aren’t a fan of being around for it.

“Okay,” Gladio holds out the keycard to you before freezing and drawing it back a little.

“What?” You take the metal card and turn it over. “Well, guess I _don’t_ need this, then.”

Engraved in the thin metal of the card is a near-identical barcode to your own, just a few numbers off. Without even really thinking about it, you drop the card back on the floor, your fingers going slack. Your head feels like what a fire is like, hot and crackling and something else you can’t describe. If you don’t get away from the other two right this fucking second you’re gonna break down right in front of them.

You rip off your stupid wristband once again and test your wrist on the door to the Specimen Storage Wing. With a flash of green and a happy little beep, the door slides open.

“Look at that,” you flash a shaky grin to Ignis. “I’ve got the keys to the place. I’ll be back, alright? There might be some potions or food or something for me to scrounge up.”

You can only hold back the impending meltdown for so long so you start off down the hallway. “Call me if you need me! I’ll do the same.”  
“Stay _safe_ ,” Ignis calls out from behind you. “We don’t know what’s here.”

“Just MTs,” Gladio says it loud enough for you to hear as you speed-walk away, though it’s not really meant for you. “Any people who could be here were supposed to be in there.”

Once you’ve rounded at least five corners and gotten quite a few doors between you and the others (your heart sinks more and more at every affirmative beep displaying your wrist grants you) you let yourself just sit and rest. There’s an Ebony vending machine tucked in the corner of the room you’ve holed up in, and you lean your back against it, thunking the back of your head against the display every few seconds.

You are… something. Not a Lucian by birth (you never were that) but now probably not even anything by _birth_. Clones are made not born, aren’t they? Every ridiculous science fiction comic or movie you read with Noct back in the good ol’ days said that. You’re an escaped lab rat. The label on the broken tank in the storage wing called the dead body an MT.

Is that what you are?

You turn the two letters over in your head, staring at the abhorrent tattoo you’ve yearned for the meaning of all your life. Is this it? Is that the answer? That you’re not only a useless mess of a person half the time, but that you’re not even a real person at all? That you’re a mass-produced thing meant to become just another one of those tin soldiers you’ve been killing without hesitation for months? That you were supposed to be a daemonic ball of miasma and electric screaming dissolving into the grass after real people cut you down? How did that even work? What did they do to those things in those tanks that made them into the shadowy insides of metal soldiers? What would they have done to _you_?  
  
You remember, in the briefest vaguest flash of a memory long-forgotten, childhood nightmares of needles and iron and pain. When you ran to your foster parents for comfort, they were always stiff when you told them what was wrong. Eventually you stopped going to them.

Gods, can anything be normal after this? Will you spend your days recounting every look and word from anyone who’s known you, wondering if they could tell what you were even when you couldn’t? Will anyone want you after this? Will Ignis? Will Gladio? ~~If~~ When Noct comes out of the Crystal, will he still care about you the way he did before?

You can’t let it end here. You would do _anything_ to stay by your friends’ sides, even if you’re a… whatever you are. You have to be useful. You have to be better. You can start by gathering supplies like you said you would, starting with getting Ignis some Ebony from the vending machine you’ve been absentmindedly hitting your head against for the last few minutes. Ignis would probably appreciate some of his favorite drink after the absolutely terrible week ~~you all have been~~ he’s been having.

You pull yourself to your feet and confront the happily glowing machine, its Ebony branding stark and cheerful against the cold factory backdrop. There’s a sticker beside the coin slot proclaiming that a can costs 150 gil.  
  
You don’t have 150 gil. For fuck’s sake, you don’t even have 1 gil.

“Godsdamnit,” you hit the front of the machine with a fist, as if that will make the price requirement suddenly fade away. “Can’t one thing just go _right_?”

You hit the machine again. It feels… good. You were never the type to knock holes in walls or go to target practice to blow off anger, but now you think you might see why some people fall into that. It’s cathartic, punching the shit out of a stupid glowing box that can’t feel it or hurt you back. When you’re beating up a vending machine you don’t have to think about how Noct is gone or that your home is gone or that Iggy almost died in your arms twice on your way out of Zegnautus or that you’re an MT or that you’re an MT or that you’re an MT—

You need to get a coffee out of this thing. At least one. You told yourself you were going to get Ignis a can of coffee and by the Astrals you are going to whether you have gil or not. You’ve never tried to break into a vending machine before, but how hard can it be? You know not to tip it (you’ll definitely die if you try) but maybe you could destroy the little computer inside? Or open up the coin reservoir and just steal all the coins out of that?  
  
You raise the gun you didn’t even realize you summoned and level it at the little lock on the side of the machine. One shot will hopefully blow out the lock and let you open up the coin compartment.

On one hand: you definitely open up the coin box. The panel comes open with the help of a bullet hole and some prying with one of Ignis’s sturdier daggers. You scoop out and store not only all the gil from the machine, but all the coffee too. On the other hand: you just made a _lot_ of noise. While you’re probably far enough away for it to not bother Ignis and Gladio, it’s definitely loud enough to gain the attention of a frankly ridiculous amount of MTs that were idling Shiva knows where.

It isn’t long after you tuck the final can away into the ether that you hear the first metallic footsteps echo down the halway. You freeze, hand still bright with borrowed power. You mutter a curse, rousing yourself from your stall, and duck behind one of the desks in the corner. You run through your inventory of weapons, sorting through your supplies in your mind’s eye. You have your revolver, which is all well and good, but you aren’t sure if it’ll be much use in a room full of MTs. You have your grenades and a bazooka or two, but you’re very likely to just blow yourself up in a room like this. You have machinery, but spraying out poison or a gravity sphere or deafening yourself with supersonic noise are just as bad ideas as trying to blow the MTs up. You could maybe use your circular saw, but it’s way too slow to swing around and you’d probably get your arm chopped off ~~nearly for the second time~~ for your trouble.

You pull out one of your stolen Rapidus machine guns and peek over the edge of the desk. Within seconds, MTs begin to spill into the room, eyes bright and eerie. You never noticed how they seemed to hum from somewhere within their armor, quiet and almost musically. A2, the you that took band an an elective for a semester in middle school provides, offhand. Your perfect pitch never did much for you, but hey, at least you can identify the exact tone of the daemonic whirs these twisted things are making as they set out to kill you and everyone you love.

It’s effortless to mow down the axemen that make it through the door first. They don’t have a chance when it comes to long-range, so you just have to sit back and hold down the trigger. The first few bullets always seem to plunk off but it doesn’t take much to find the weak spots of these things. Eyes, center of chest, elbows, knees. Easy.

The riflemen are harder because they actually shoot back. You end up sliding up and over the desk so you can kick a new rifle out of the hands of one. You could just reload the one you already had, but something in you feels horribly terrifyingly reckless. You feel pain sprout from your right thigh as you are grazed by a shot from across the room. Whirling around and planting ten bullets in the chest of the MT that wounded you is almost exhilarating.

You dare them to hurt you. You dance around the magitek assassins that arrived just behind the departed riflemen, ducking swirling blades and striking out with the butt of your rifle more than actually shooting the thing, sometimes. You were never good at hand-to-hand. You do it anyway. You want to laugh. You want to cry. Maybe both at once. You were always such a terrible soldier, a terrible Crownsguard, and yet somehow you’re still the superior model to all these scrap heaps.

Eventually they just stop coming. You stand in the middle of the room, smelling of blood and gunpowder, none the worse for wear save for the superficial wound on your leg and a few cuts along your arms. Your hands are empty, the last rifle either dismissed back to the arsenal or somewhere on the ground. You aren’t sure. You can barely even remember what you did to win; you just did it.

There’s a rattling from the corner of the room, and you jerk your head to see a lone MT, shuddering on the ground in its armor. It’s head is lifted up from the floor, its entire form trembling as its face follows your movements.

The air seems to leave your lungs all at once, less of a voluntary exhale and more of a forced undertaking. You swallow thickly and step over the other fallen MTs that are beginning to melt into the metal grating beneath and disappear.

The thing in front of you (it’s just a thing it’s just a thing it’s just a thing) reaches up with a gauntlet clutching the air weakly. When you blink, you see Lucian black and coeurl print, red-rimmed eyes and a flash of blond. ~~You~~ The MT groans and stretches ~~your~~ its hand toward you, almost as if ~~you’re~~ it’s seeking comfort in ~~your~~ its dying throes. Almost as if ~~you~~ it wants you to put ~~you~~ it out of ~~your~~ its misery.

You resummon your revolver, your Accordan-made beauty with _Enforcer_ engraved on the side. Noct won it for you from the Totomostro just a few days before the Rite of Leviathan. It feels heavier in your hands than any weapon ever has. You take a breath. You try to steady your aim, taking hold of the grip with your free hand. Your gun wavers.

Just shoot. Just shoot it. Just shoot the MT. Just shoot the godsdamned MT. Just shoot the fucking MT you worthless—

A gunshot has never sounded louder than when you put it between your own two eyes. When you blink in shock at the noise, the MT is just an MT again. The image of yourself, mouth open in a silent plea, hand outstretched for mercy, is gone. All that sits is a metal shell, already beginning to crack and sink into the floor, overtaken by miasma.

You touch your face and realize that you’re crying. You choke and whine, alone in a room in some facility far from home, alone in the place your enemies were created. The place where all these clones, these siblings, this family that you’ve been murdering for months came from. The place where _you_ came from.

You never had a real family in Insomnia. Not truly. You thought you had gained one with your friends, but who can say what will happen now that Noct is gone and you’re not exactly what everyone believed?

Were those _things_ your siblings? Were they people once? Had they ever seen life beyond those tanks before the Empire found some way to turn them into soldiers? Did they have hopes and dreams and names, or were you the only one? Are you _more_ than them because of the life you’ve lived, or are you less?

You fumble your phone out of your pocket. It’s none the worse for wear somehow, despite having been through hell and back with you on this journey. You dial Ignis’s number and detachedly thank him in your head for securing you a Crown-issue phone before you set out on the trip. Your old pre-paid shattered at the mere mention of being dropped on the ground.

“Prompto? Are you alright?” Ignis’s voice is thin, flattened by the transfer between his phone and a satellite and your own cell. There’s a crackling sound, as if Ignis is shuffling through a bunch of papers. He must be.

“I’m okay,” you say, though you don’t really think that’s true. “Can you… come get me?”  
  
A moment of stillness, before your phone emits more rapid papery noises and then muffled voices. Ignis returns. “Of course. Where are you?”

You’ve sunk down to your knees somewhere between pressing CALL and now. You raise your gaze from the floor to look at the plaque by the door. “I’m in an employee lounge.”

“Okay,” Ignis says, his voice betraying little but amenability. “We’re on our way.”

There’s another moment of silence, followed by some fumbling noises, and you can’t help yourself from bursting out. “Please don’t hang up!”  
  
“I’m still here,” Ignis affirms, and you can hear Gladio ask something in the background. Ignis must put his hand over the receiver, because the only thing you hear out of his reply is the general tone of his voice. When he speaks clearly again, it’s soft. “There’s several employee lounges. Do you know which one you are in?”  
  
You check the plaque again, the task of raising your head and searching out the room number feeling too gargantuan for what it is. “Room 0114.”  
  
“Thank you,” is Ignis’s immediate response. “We’ll be there soon.”  
  
You pull yourself up from the floor after a minute, phone held tight against your ear by a shaking hand. _Enforcer_ is still in the other one, held with white-knuckled fingers. After a moment of simply standing in place, you shuffle over to the desk you hid behind and lean against it, resting your legs for a moment. You close your eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)!


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